Another Way Out
by agendersubaru
Summary: Tensions between the Sakamaki and Mukami gangs grow to the point of war after Azusa is badly injured in a fight. (AU, contains Ayato/Yui and Shu/Yuma)


**(A/N: Dialovers mafia au haha,,, this one's for Sami because I always get rly inspired while reading Sami's fics and that's what made me wanna write this!**

 **This fic contains uhh...lots of swearing and violence, mostly :0 and stuff like hostage situations, murder, etc etc...anyway! Be careful! Oh, and pairs in this fic include Ayato/Yui and Shu/Yuma, and there's some other relationships too but it's up in the air whether they're platonic or romantic so I'll let 'em be surprises. If you don't like those ships then it's okay not to read my fic, nobody is forcing you to. Thank you ^^)**

* * *

The Mukami family, consisting of four adoptive brothers, ran a bar called _Eden_ on some run-down street, with a smoke shop on one side of it and a tattoo parlor on the other. It was a bad part of town and they only had cheap beer, so things were mostly dead. If they did get customers then they were the real unsavory types, the ones that didn't know when to stop drinking and the ones that started shouting and throwing things. But that was fine. The bar was a cover for something else anyway.

There was usually only one of the brothers manning the bar at all times. That was if the bar was open at all, and more often than not it wasn't. The patrons could often see one of the brothers returning home covered in bruises or maybe with a black eye, or with blood on their clothes. The presumed little brother of the group, Azusa, was especially mysterious. He didn't even have to leave the house - he'd go _upstairs_ and come back down with new injuries.

Azusa was the only one they couldn't leave alone in the bar. One of his brothers was always there with him during his shifts. Azusa wasn't the biggest guy, and his arms were kinda skinny and he didn't look well-fed. He looked even smaller next to Yuma, who was the beefiest guy in his whole family. He was always wearing muscle shirts so you could take one look at him and know that you shouldn't fuck with him just from the size of his arms alone. Yuma gave the impression of Azusa's bodyguard, almost. It was obvious that the two brothers were very close.

Azusa, for example, would be washing a glass in the sink and drop it in, and it would shatter. One particularly drunk man who had been eyeing the slow-moving boy for quite a while slammed his own glass down, causing it to spill a bit onto his knuckles.

"Y'see," he slurred, jabbing a finger in Azusa's direction. "He's a fuck-up. It's a damn act of charity yuh've been keepin' him aroun' for so long. It's no good keepin' someone so useless, yer just gonna piss off yer payin' customers. You should toss 'im back out on the streets where you found 'im. He's a gotdamned fuck-up."

Azusa slowly looked towards the man, and then towards his brother. "I'm sorry…Yuma. I'll clean...it up." He started to reach his hand into the sink full of broken glass.

Yuma grabbed his wrist and stopped him, though. "No, I'll get it," he said. "I don't trust ya to do it without gloves."

Well, he was right not to trust him. But Yuma didn't exactly do much better than Azusa would've.

He reached in the sink with his bare hands too, and grabbed a decently-sized shard of glass. The drunk man was still berating Azusa, talking about how long he had to wait for his drink and how he hadn't even mixed it right. He had to stop complaining, though, when Yuma pressed that shard of glass against the man's throat from across the bar.

"Don't you say another fucking _word_ about my brother," Yuma said darkly. This voice and the gentler voice he used with Azusa were worlds apart. This Yuma sounded ruthless, ready to kill. "You don't know a goddamn thing about him. You should just shut up and run away like the chicken shit you are."

The man had leaned so far back to avoid the glass at his neck that his bar stool trembled on the verge of tipping over. When the man tried to get up, his seat did tip over and he fell backwards onto his back with a thud, shattering his own glass as well. He scrambled to his feet and made a break for it, running out the front door, shouting back curse words and threats to call the police.

"Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out!" Yuma called after him, throwing the shard of glass back in the sink and breaking it even further. He continued to mutter: "Call the cops, you son of a bitch, see what happens." He turned away and clicked his tongue in frustration, and Azusa was behind him, busily putting on a thick pair of gloves.

"I found the gloves," Azusa said, looking up at Yuma with big eyes.

"Ah, good job. I'll take care of it, though."

Azusa tensed up a little bit, and held his gloved hands to his chest. "...I can do it."

Yuma cocked his head to the side. "You alright?"

He was looking downwards. "I don't want...to be useless," he said in his quiet, somewhat dreary tone. "If I'm useless then...like that man said, it might be better to throw me out."

Yuma's fingers curled into a fist but he quickly loosened it, and offered Azusa a smile. "Don't say that stuff, you little dork," he said, patting Azusa's head (a little too roughly). "You're with us for good. You know why?"

Azusa knew the answer to that question. His eyes brightened immediately. "Because we're family."

"That's right," Yuma said, ruffling his hair. "We're family."

Azusa might've been a fuck-up but at least he had a family. In the past he had done whatever anyone asked him to do - if someone handed him a few bills and told him to burn down a building then he'd do it. He'd screw it up lots of times, and the person who hired him often beat him up and took their money back. The families of the people he hurt hated him for going after their loved ones and the men who hired him hated him for being a fuck-up. He had no friends or allies to speak of. He was always hungry, always hurting, to the point where he started to enjoy it in some sick way. But Ruki, Yuma, and Kou had taken him in. They didn't think he was a fuck-up; they considered him family. It made Azusa feel warm and it didn't hurt. Azusa loved them.

Because he loved them, he wanted to be useful to them, however he could. He didn't want to be the fuck-up.

The next day Azusa was alone at the bar when Kou came downstairs, huffing angrily to himself, and he slumped down at the bar and crossed his arms, pouting. "Ruki's the worst," he grumbled, kicking his shoe against the bar.

Azusa turned his head and gazed at him. "Is everything okay…?"

"Listen to this!" Kou commanded, sitting up straight and slamming his hands on the table. "All I wanted to do today was go to that new mall that just opened up, right?"

Azusa slowly nodded.

"Well I got all ready to go, did my hair and everything, and then Ruki told me I can't since it's in the Sakamaki's territory!" He slumped back again, scowling at this injustice. "Who cares about those borders anyway? Is anyone really gonna care if I do some shopping? We're in the worst part of town, there's nothing here-" He was gesturing wildly with his hands. "And I was gonna go in disguise anyway! Nobody would have known or cared. Ruki's so uptight about the dumbest stuff. I mean, I could take on some Sakamaki guys anyway! If it came to that! Which it wouldn't!"

Azusa blinked at him. "I'm...sorry." He thought about it for quite some time, and then spoke up: "What if I went?"

Kou raised an eyebrow at him. "You? Ruki won't let you go either, you know."

"I won't ask for permission." Azusa felt a sudden rush. He wasn't used to being this rebellious. "Like you said, it would be fine if I went in disguise. I'll buy what you want...and come back, and Ruki won't know."

"I don't know, Azusa…"

He stood up. "I can go," he said, a little more confidently now. "I want...to be useful to you, after all."

A smile crept onto Kou's face. "Well, what the heck!" he said, getting up out his seat too. "I said it'd be fine, didn't I? As long as you promise not to cause any trouble."

Azusa smiled too. "I won't...cause trouble."

"And call me if you need anything, okay? I'll come and get you on the off chance that there _is_ some trouble."

"I'll call you."

"Good! Then I'll write down what I want!"

Kou gave Azusa the shopping list and Azusa went on his way. Azusa was all enthusiastic about it when it was back at the house, but just after getting a few blocks away, he was already nervous. He couldn't remember the last time he had went into the Sakamaki's territory. He hadn't ever met anyone from the Sakamaki group, but they were supposedly very powerful, a very wide-spread group, very deadly. Remorseless, he heard. The Sakamaki's side of town was wealthier than the Mukami's but not at all safer. There was routinely horrifying news from that side of town: people would die, women would go missing. They had people everywhere, and it was definitely not a good place to be a member of an opposing (and much smaller) gang, like Azusa was.

There was a movie theater that marked the border between the two territories. Azusa stood by the theater and gazed out towards the other part of town. It was better-painted, and the buildings were wider rather than taller. It didn't even look that much different, but Azusa was starting to sweat. He pulled his hoodie over his head and shoved his hands in his pockets and crossed over, keeping his head down the whole time.

After a while when he realized that these were just average people and this was just a regular place, he started to look around him a bit more. It was a new place, after all, and he wanted to take it all in. There was an ice cream shop here. An ice cream shop! If the Mukamis wanted ice cream they had to go to some burger joint down the street that sold milkshakes. This part of town had a shop just for ice cream.

The mall was like a different planet. The ceiling was so high up, and the floors were so shiny. Azusa needed to refer to a map several times, but he eventually found the clothing outlet that Kou wanted him to visit, and he found the items Kou wanted him to buy. On the way back, Azusa thought he'd visit the ice cream store. He was happy about being useful to his brother, and he had felt so confident in this new part of town. He thought one more stop wouldn't hurt.

Just as he was thinking that, though, he bumped into someone. He stumbled back a bit and nearly dropped his shopping bags. The person he had bumped into, though, _did_ drop their bags. A big bag of candies spilled out onto the floor around their feet.

It took Azusa a long time to react, as it usually did. He looked up, into the eyes of the person he had bumped into. It was a boy, a boy with dark circles under his eyes, who was looking horrified at the fact that all his sweets were now on the floor.

"What did you do?!" the boy shouted at him. "All my candy...All my candy is...!"

Again, Azusa was too slow. He started to apologize, but the boy yelled right over him.

"What are you going to do about this?! You don't even plan to say anything, do you?" The boy bared his teeth, his face alight in rage. "Fine! You can apologize by getting on the ground and licking my sweets off the ground."

Azusa tilted his head a bit at him. He had thought earlier that the floors looked very clean, but there were tons of people walking on them, so he was sure that the floor wasn't safe to lick.

"Well? _Do it_."

"...No," Azusa said, blinking at the boy.

" _Excuse me_?"

"...It's dirty, so, I won't-"

The boy had pulled a switchblade on Azusa before he could get out another word. He held it pointed towards Azusa's stomach. "I don't care if it's dirty," he said in a much calmer, almost dream-like voice. "You're going to get down on the ground and lick it. Aren't you?"

Azusa gripped the handles of the shopping bags tightly. He hunched over a little bit, getting himself closer to the ground. Then, he turned and ran like hell.

"Hah? Where are you going?! Get back here you swine!" The boy screamed, chasing after Azusa.

With the shopping bags weighing him down, Azusa sprinted as fast as he could, gasping for air but refusing to slow down. All the stores and buildings he had marvelled at before were a blur now. He refused to turn back to see if the boy was chasing him, and instead he kept his eyes glued forward. He could hear that the boy was still in pursuit by the sound of his high-pitched screaming. And he could tell he was getting closer.

All he had to do was get back into the Mukami's territory, he figured. Then the boy would give up, maybe, or maybe Azusa could just lose him. When the theater came into view, Azusa saw it as his finish line, and he sped up.

Even when he passed it, though, he was still being chased. Azusa turned his head briefly to see the wide-eyed boy racing after him, still brandishing a knife. Just about ten feet behind him now. Azusa felt his heart hammering in his chest. Waiting for him to give up was not an option now; he had to lose him.

Azusa ducked into an alleyway, one that he knew had plenty of twists to take or fences to leap over, and hopefully he could find a way to shake his assailant off there. Ignoring his calls of " _Get back here_ -" followed by a plethora of threats and offensive phrases, he turned around each corner swiftly. Once, one of the bags holding Kou's new clothes hit the corner of the building and Azusa dropped it.

Though he was panicked, sweating, out of breath, and desperate to survive, Azusa thought for a moment only of Kou's face.

The boy with the knife must've been just five feet behind him now. A little more and Azusa could've felt his breath on him.

But he couldn't leave the bag. Kou would be sad.

Azusa stopped running. He whirled around, and stuck out his arm to reach the bag he had dropped.

The boy lunged forward and sunk his knife into Azusa's stomach. Azusa felt a sudden deep, sick pain inside of him, sharp enough to make him go dizzy. He collapsed to his knees, coughed violently, and tasted blood in his mouth. He tried to lift his head to find the shopping bag again, but everything was spinning now and he couldn't find it.

Despite himself, Azusa felt his face flush and he started to laugh in between coughs. He clutched his stomach, feeling hot blood spread onto his hands.

The boy stuck his nose up at him. "I told you I'd get you on the ground one way or another," he said haughtily, shaking off his switchblade. Flecks of blood painted the ground red. "Now what are you laughing about? You're so creepy."

He couldn't help it. It felt good.

Azusa weakly lifted his head towards the boy. "Please," he panted, his cheeks red and his eyes glossy. "I need to go home to my family."

He was silenced after a swift kick to the head knocked him out.

* * *

Kou was back at the bar, tapping on the table with his fingers and listening to the radio. He kept fidgeting irritably. Azusa had been gone for an awfully long time. It was getting dark out.

The door suddenly opened, and Kou suddenly sat up straight. "Azusa?!"

It was Yuma, who had returned home with a bunch of boxes in his arms. "No, it's me. Where's Azusa?"

Kou fell silent. "Oh, y'know," he said after some deliberation.

Yuma set the boxes behind the bar. "No, I don't know. Where is he?"

Kou looked guiltily out the window.

Yuma's voice dropped an octave. "Kou."

"Okay look!" Kou turned to Yuma, nothing but despair on his face. "I sent him out shopping earlier today, and I know I didn't send him out to the best place for him to be, I know-"

"Where did you send him?" Yuma asked, anger rising in his voice.

"But he _asked_ to go, Yuma, he really seemed like he wanted to, he wanted to help me-"

"For shit's sake, Kou, where did you send him?"

"I sent him to the new mall that opened on the other side of town and he hasn't come back yet and I'm really sorry!" Kou wailed, putting his head in his hands.

Yuma cursed loudly, resisting the urge to throw something. "You're an idiot!" he said, glowering at Kou. "If you're gonna disobey Ruki then do it yourself, don't make Azusa take the fall for you! Shit! I'm gonna go find him."

Before Yuma was out the door, though, Kou's phone started ringing.

"Oh my god oh my god wait it's Azusa!" he loudly announced, fumbling with his phone in his hands.

Yuma snatched it right out of his hands and answered it for him. "Azusa, talk to me," he demanded. "Where are you? Do you need help?"

The voice that answered was not Azusa's. "You better come pick up your kid," the voice said in a laughing sort of way. "And you better teach him some manners. You can't cross the Sakamakis like that and get away with it."

"Azusa!" Yuma shouted into the phone. "Stay where you are! Listen, you son of a bitch, if you lay a finger on my brother-"

Yuma couldn't finish his sentence. Kanato, rather than hanging up, had thrown Azusa's phone onto the ground, shattering it.

Kanato looked down at the boy he had stabbed. He was now bleeding out on the ground, unconscious. He felt superbly creeped out just by looking at him. And at the end of the day, he couldn't get his sweets back, either. He took out his anger by spitting on Azusa, kicking some dirt onto him, and then he turned and headed back home. He didn't want to stay in this rotten part of town any longer.


End file.
